Luck Can’t Bail Out Angels, Schoeneweis

The alignment of the planets and the sun and the moon had nothing to do with this one. Angel pitcher Scott Schoeneweis, who felt he was a victim of bad luck in his previous start, was a victim of bad pitching Sunday.

There were no supernatural forces at work, just the relentless bats of the Seattle Mariners, who pounded Schoeneweis for seven runs and eight hits in five innings of a 7-3 victory over the Angels before 45,722 in Safeco Field.

“I had a bad performance, and we lost,” Schoeneweis said. “That’s the bottom line. There’s nothing more I can say. That’s it.”

With that, Schoeneweis, who usually dissects his starts--win or lose--as thoroughly as a biology professor, headed for the team bus, a stark contrast to the pitcher who rambled on about his misfortune and a litany of cheap Texas Ranger hits in last Tuesday night’s 7-5 loss.

“This game is not about luck,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We know that.”

Indeed, it’s about clutch hitting and aggressive baserunning and applying constant offensive pressure like the Mariners did Sunday, scoring four runs in the first and padding their lead in the second and fifth.

With Ichiro Suzuki given the day off, Mike Cameron had two doubles, a walk, two stolen bases and two runs from the leadoff spot. Bret Boone added a home run and run-scoring single to set single-season franchise records for home runs (20) and RBIs (78) by a Mariner second baseman.

Paul Abbott survived a rocky start, giving up Garret Anderson’s two-run double in the top of the first to go 6 2/3 innings, giving up three runs and four hits for his first career victory against the Angels in five decisions.

Relievers Arthur Rhodes, Jeff Nelson and Kazuhiro Sasaki blanked the Angels over the final 2 1/3 innings, with Sasaki striking out Adam Kennedy and Darin Erstad with two on to end the game for his major league-leading 27th save.

The victory should quell the panic that seemed to be settling over the Pacific Northwest. Seattle had lost five of its last seven, its lead in the American League West dwindling to 17 1/2 games Saturday night, and the same question kept popping up: What’s wrong with the Mariners?

“People basically expect you to play at the pace you’ve played for the entire season, and we probably raised the bar a little too high,” Seattle Manager Lou Piniella said. “We have a nice aggressive club that has jelled as a team, but we’re not the 1939 Yankees. We’re not.”

The Mariners (55-19) are on pace for a major league-record 120 victories, but Piniella said that’s an unrealistic goal.

“I’ve tried to be realistic as a manager,” Piniella said. “I think the media creates most of the problems with its line of questioning. But it’s great too. We sell out every day. What’s wrong with that?

“It makes my job tougher trying to deflect it, but for us to win with consistency, things have to go right for us. We’re a bit of a finesse team. We don’t have a lot of power. Most of the games we’ve played, we’re in, and they could go one way or the other.”

This one turned in the bottom of the first. Cameron walked to open the inning, and Stan Javier laced an RBI double to left. Edgar Martinez hit a towering fly ball into the right-field corner that Tim Salmon misplayed. It was generously scored an RBI double.

“It was fair--I should have caught it,” Salmon said. “I overran it.”

Martinez took third on John Olerud’s groundout, and Boone followed with a key at-bat, fouling off several two-strike pitches before stroking a sinker to right field for an RBI single.

Ed Sprague smoked an RBI double over the head of center fielder Erstad to make it 4-2. Cameron’s double and Javier’s RBI single made it 5-2 in the second, home runs by Boone and Dan Wilson in the fifth made it 7-3, but this game was essentially decided in the first.

“We cracked the door open a little bit,” Scioscia said, “and they busted it open.”